“Climate Change Costs Are Starting to Bite Business”… How Not To Conjugate Verbs

Climate Change Costs Are Starting to Bite BusinessCorporate America wants a stable business climate, and climate chaos is anything but

BY PAUL RAUBER | APR 29 2019

What will it take for American businesses to get serious about fighting climate change? Maybe this: In January, facing $30 billion in liabilities for its role in recent wildfires, California’s mighty investor-owned utility Pacific Gas and Electric filed for bankruptcy protection. Overnight, the company lost half its value. “There is a fundamental shift taking place right now in business,” says Joel Makower, chair and executive editor of GreenBiz Group, “and the shift is from ‘What is business doing to the climate?’ to ‘What is climate doing to business?'”

If business does nothing, the downside is enormous. In North America, extreme weather events and natural disasters caused $91 billion in damages in 2018 alone, and the latest National Climate Assessment warns that if the world does not take strong action soon, annual losses to US businesses could total half a trillion dollars.

PG&E’s liability for “its role in recent wildfires” is not related to climate change.

Weather is not climate.

Warnings about mythical future perils are not “starting to bite business”… Misguided government policies in a futile war against the weather are definitely taking a bite out of business.

In arguendo let’s accept the claim that “extreme weather events and natural disasters caused $91 billion in damages in 2018.” Not all of these costs were to businesses, but we’ll run with that number. What else takes bites out of businesses?

Federal taxes includes personal income taxes, Social Security taxes, corporate income taxes, excise taxes and estate taxes because, ultimately, it’s business that generate the revenue that enables the taxation.

The IPCC calculated that it will cost $122 trillion to avoid 1.5 °C of warming relative to the alleged pre-industrial average. The average annual cost through 2050 would be $800 to $2,900 billion…

47 thoughts on ““Climate Change Costs Are Starting to Bite Business”… How Not To Conjugate Verbs”

There is a fundamental shift taking place. Liberal corporate America is full of shit and the GOP and Democrats have switched places as to who represents the country’s historic working class, with working class wage gains, job growth and economic security happening during a GOP administration and NOT Democrat.

The GOP and Democrats have not switched places as to who represents the country’s working class. It is just that the Democrats efforts to destroy and impoverish the working class making them dependent on the Democrat governing class have gotten to the point that almost everyone is starting to see through the decades of lies and realize the disaster that is coming if the Democrats are allowed to continue down the path they have been heading.

A faulty power line falls in a wind storm and lights a fire…and this is caused by climate change?

Hmm, let’s see…California has had high speed dry winds throughout history. Check.
High speed dry winds dry out local vegetation…Check.
There have always been fires under these conditions; fires are correlated with population… Check.
The more rural communities, the more electric power transmite through fire danger areas. Check
California power companies have repeatedly failed to update their distribution systems. Check.

It seems the average intelligence of people is a lot lower than I expected. It boggles the mind that people can’t see what’s right in front of them, and make pronouncements without the slightest understanding of the consequences.

In one of the more under-reported stories of the year, just 5 weeks ago (Friday announcement, of course), Governor Gavin Newsom declared an emergency, cited “extreme peril”, and waived environmental restrictions in order to clear dead trees before next fire season.

Robert of Texas,
Right! and one more check mark:
IMHO Utility companies shouldn’t be penalized when they are forced by political mandates to contend with “off spec” poor quality power from a dozen wind farms with a dozen turbines and thousands of puny rooftop solar panels. Considering all this junk power, operating at different times and producing different quantities and qualities of electricity from different directions dumped on the grid: Is it any surprise that a transformer overheats?
Eventually it will become known everywhere, as it already is in Germany, that after 30%, or so, grid penetration by renewables additional intermittent non-dispatchable “power” substitutes for only 5% of conventional power. Excess (>10% renewable grid penetration) worth-less-than-nothing wind and solar junk power is “grid poison” and should be “landfilled” (most of the material is non-recyclable). Combined cycle gas turbines now & small scale modular nuclear when it’s available (soon).

The burden on busimess is not climate change, but high cost of renewable energy.
And the Paradise fire is more the fault of renewable energy because of the stress it places on the system, causing premature equipment failures and needless excess costs. It may have even directly caused the fire.

Very good article. The reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, one can conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is very small and is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So even if we could remove all of the CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere, doing so would end life on this planet but if would do nothing to change the climate. But even if wi could stop the Earth’s climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue unabated because they are part of our current climate. Spending money on fighting climate change is a total waste. Even if we could ourselves change the Earth’s climate we do not even know what to change the climate too. The optimal climate has never been defined. Rather than waste money trying to fight climate change, we should be strengthening the economy.

“And there isn’t one shred of evidence that a $122 trillion Global War on Weather will have any effect on the weather.”
In fact there is good evidence that the GWW can’t even change atmospheric CO2 (Harde 2017) so of the $91 Billion only about 4% of the cost due to CO2, which might well be zero, could have been dodged if no one anywhere used fossil fuels. This is not crying out for “strong action soon”.

Much of what the Greens say they want to avoid, the policies they push would result then directly bringing that result about.

Want to see the environment destroyed? Then implement the “green” policies that will destroy affordable energy, and the resulting energy poverty will lead to very thing they said they wanted to avoid.

When the dishonest Democrats in the US talk about the Green New Deal, they want ignorant voters to visualize flowing fields of green grass and vast green forests set against deep blue skies.
Meanwhile, in their own minds they are visualizing a very different sort of flowing green. The green in the GND for them is green rivers of taxpayer-provided greenbacks flowing into their hands to re-distribute to their campaign and political special interest supporters to keep them in power.
Its how Maduro, and Chavez before him, were able to gain power and then remain in power in Venezuela while simultaneously bringing about the very ruin they convinced their ignorant support base they would avoid.

When we hear Feynman’s oft-repeated statement of, “science is a belief in the ignorance of the experts.” that is just a narrower interpretation of a broader intellectual phenomenon applied specifically to science endeavors.

Feynman’s observation about science actually applies equally well to many intellectual endeavors undertaken by the human mind. It most especially applies to economics and economic experts. The PhD-carrying elitists economists, for which there are as many economic theories as there are of them, are ignorant experts in the same manner. Applied to them it says,“rational economics is a belief in the ignorance of the economic experts.”

What has the the economic experts baffled so far is why the US economy has not endured the typical, historical business cycle of boom-recession-repeat since the big one in 2009-2010 after the 2008 sub-prime mortgage-fed financial meltdown. Where is the next recession? Why have we gone almost 10 years of expansion without a fallback?
None of the economic experts seems to be able to admit what is right in front of them.
I say they are “ignorant” of the US’s energy dominance revolution that has occurred over that same time period.

The recent re-birth and growth of domestic oil and gas production (the shal-frack revolution) has ensured that when business picks up, and/or consumer spending (vacations, and liesure spending) picks up, most of that cash used to pay for the additional energy has stayed in US domestic companies pockets. It has directly gone to either the oil/gas related industry or indirectly in all the parts of US industry and business economy that supports the additional energy delivery.
Frack sand from Wisconsin. Steel pipe from the Rust belt. All the service industries that support drilling and domestic delivery of domestic oil now.
In the time before the oil/gas re-birth, it that used to mean that additional energy revenue from a boom cycle went to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Cash rapidly drained out of the US economy for more energy as the expansion widen across the economy, thus acting as negative feedback to ultimately limit the expansion magnitude and their durations, such that the business cycle times were a shorter 3-6 years between recessions.
Sure we buy a lot of Saudi oil still but, but we are now also able to export more refined products and also export crude oil for the first time, in long time.

I’m not arguing that the business cycle has ended or the next recession is forever put off. I’m arguing our newfound energy dominance has fundamentally altered (lengthened dramatically) the business cycle timing till the next recession and its resulting magnitude will be shallower on the downside.

And I am arguing that the many PhD economists who don’t see or acknowledge this new role of US energy dominance and the business cycle is supporting evidence for a belief in the ignorance of the economic experts.

It appears that most of the rest of the world is slipping towards recession. I heard today that the EU growth rate was down to 0.4, as compared to 3.2 in the U.S. China is also slowing down.

The U.S. economy is the bright spot in the world and I think you are correct in thinking the development of the oil and gas industry has a lot to do with it.

Regulatons have also been slashed which makes it easier for people to establish a small business.

Things are rocking in the USA! We need lots of skilled workers.

Free Enterprise is being enabled in the U.S. and this economy is the result, and it should keep on going for quite some time as 75 percent of U.S. GDP is generated internally, and about half of the rest is generated from trade with Mexico and Canada. Not that a world economic slowdown won’t slowdown the U.S. economy, because it will, but the U.S. will be slowed less than other countries especially now that government over-regulation is being brought under control.

As Trump said, companies from other nations are eager to bring investments to the U.S.because of the good business climate here. Japanese auto companies are expected to be investing $40 billion in the U.S. in the next few years, he said.

The US has been propping up most of the other countries in the world for years by exporting jobs and importing stuff. Not to mention through NATO, by taking on the costs of protecting countries that refuse to pay to protect themselves; Americans are paying taxes so Germans can run down their military and fund a fat welfare state instead.

Now that’s ending. So America is getting rich as the money and jobs come back, and all those other countries are finding the subsidies drying up.

And I read a few months ago that over a hundred billion dollars of foreign investment that had been supposed to come to Canada just shifted to the US instead, because we have Trudeau and you have Trump.

Australia’s “ruinable” energy policies regulating more wind/solar have resulted in a shift from among the lowest electricity prices in the world to among the highest. Add to that high gas prices because of bans on exploration and fracking. Net result: those businesses that can are moving to other countries. But our greenies feel good, even if Australia’s impact on global temperatures is zero to two significant figures.

Rather than make any useful substantive contribution, I will instead just note, school-marmishly, that “in arguendo” is bad Latin. It should just be “arguendo” all by itself, i.e., the ablative of the gerund “arguendum” from the (medieval) Latin verb “arguere”.

Despite the clear feeling from the community that CC is very low on their
list of potentials problems, its the persons who pull the levers, added by the
Media for whatever reason, which drives this madness politically.

Vote for left wing politicians and that is the way down. The vision of fields
of grass and mountains against a blue sky is very nice, but it does not produce
anything except meat, and that is a real No, no to a lot the people on the
left.

Only a very rich economy can afford to provide for the endless demands
from the population, including the ability to adapt against whatever Nature
throws at us, as of course it will.

Remember long term the Greens are intent on control, they in their small
minds want to carry out all of their nutty ideas. We tried Communism
and its lesser version , that being socialism, they simply did not work.

The Australian Hawke Keating Labour Government of the 1980 tees
was in reality a very conservative government, which is why it was
successful. Many of its party were most unhappy, but Hawke as a ex boss
of the Unions knew where all of the Labour bodies were buried, and thus kept the lid tightly on the left wing of his party.

One can but hope that Bill Shorten of the ALP, and a almost certain to
win the Federal election, is going to be similar to Bob Hawke.

Capitalism has its problems, but as we have seen in the recent Royal
Commission here in Australia about the financial sector, they can be
identified and death with.

Its long overdue for big business to realise that the Green madness will in
the short term cost them a lot of money in their frivolous court cases, and
certainly long term that the Greens want to destroy Capitalism . So
collectively these businesses have the cash to spare for a powerful campaign,
call it good propaganda, to point out to the general public all of the blatant
lies and falsehoods emanating from the giant Green lobby.

uh uh if labor gets in then the greendeals will begin look at vic right now with labor in charge billions wasted on wind n solar crap while serious needs like govt housing for the homeless arent met, and they want to bring more immirants in as well.

The geological record shows evidence of devastating wildfires in California going back thousands of years. And there is evidence of droughts lasting from decades to centuries during this interglacial (i.e. recently):

California has been in a very lucky mild climate cycle the last couple of centuries. They have been the recipients of some very lucky natural climate change. That isn’t likely to last forever.

Note: With the wet spring this year there will be a lot more fuel for mega-fires after all that fuel dries in the fall. These historic fires will be blamed on climate change…even though normal Pacific weather patterns brought the rains this spring.

Yes, “The Stupid! It Burns!” is an appropriate title (both literally and figuratively) for lunatic Leftists whose insane policies CAUSED the wildfires…

The terrible 2017 California wildfires weren’t caused by CAGW, but rather decades of insane California “environmentally-friendly” forestry laws/policies which: prevented clearing of deadfall, maintenance of forestry roads, thinning of tree density, caused the loss of 10’s of $billions of lumber business revenue, lost $billions of income/corporate tax revenues from lost forestry jobs/industry, led to higher lumber costs, lost 10’s of thousands of high-paying lumber/forestry jobs, caused an increase in the spread of tree diseases and harmful tree insect infestations, etc.

The Leftist-caused wildfires: cost the lives of 40+ people, 10,000+ lost homes and business structures, the high-intensity heat destroyed the topsoil, led to increased soil erosion, 10’s of thousands of lost animal life, etc., and let’s go ahead and add $30 billion in PG&E’s liabilities mentioned in this article for good measure…

The usual suspects are ramping up Climate Change with a manic vigour for some reason?
The BBC has even taken to consulting the last (failed) leader of the Labour Party here in the UK, one Ed Miliband seeking his wise council.
He was famous for not being able to eat a bacon sandwich in public and for creating the “Ed stone” a monolith listing the Labour pledges chiselled in stone. He intended to stand it, in the garden of Number 10 when he was elected to office in 2010. Thankfully it didn’t happen.
His other achievement was when he was environment secretary. He rammed through the Environment Protection Bill in 2008. That bill mandated the full adoption of EU carbon reduction policies, starting with the complete removal of all coal fired power plants in the EU. The UK fully complied, Germany and many other EU nations did not. Germany is actually increasing its coal fired electricity generation using lignite!!
Interestingly the follow on leader of the Labour Party rode to success in heading the Party by stating he would nationalise and redevelop the coal industry. As there is no coal industry in the UK worthy of the name any more, the socialists thought that was a really good policy….?
There is something driving this latest lunacy. Something is causing the left wing and the Media in general to ramp up their climate alarmism. It isn’t a change in the climate, and it isn’t rational. It has to be a coordinated effort to focus the public’s attention away from some real issue. I have no idea what that might be.
All I will say is, when failed politicians and 16 year old children with issues, become the go to sources for advice, (on anything) you just know it won’t end well.

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